OPEN AND DISTANCE EDUCATION IN MONGOLIA: POSSIBLE RELEVANCE
OF OPEN ACCESS
Batchuluun Yembuu
Introduction
Mongolia is a country with a vast steppe and is one of the most sparsely populated countries in
the world with an area of 1.5 million sq. km and population of 2.5 million. The 57.0 percent of
the population lives in urban areas (half in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar) while 43.0 percent in
rural. The main spoken language is Mongolian as a mother tongue. GDP per capita was 384 USD
in 1999 and 605 USD in 2004 and Mongolia places the 114th in the world for its human
development index.
Educational rate of the population is comparatively higher than other developing countries in the
region, and according to the census of 2000, adult literacy rate was 97.8 percent (in which 97.5
percent is male and 98.0 percent is female). However, the children who dropped out of school in
the beginning of 1990s has already became “adults illiterates” which was eliminated 1970s.
The most of the out of school children (81 percent) are in rural areas, and 71 percent of them are
boys. In rural areas, children tend to drop out of school to help their parents and pasture, but for
the urban children cause is that of migration from rural areas and poverty.
Non formal education as a type of open education was approved by the Law of Education in
1991 and set up in order to provide equal opportunities to education services for the certain part
of the population who are unable to get involved in formal education, especially for herdsmen,
school-dropouts and youths.
Open and Distance Education Development in Mongolia
Open and Distance Learning (ODL) is the main feature of education for this new century. ODL
has considerable potential for meeting diverse learning needs in Mongolia and suitable form of
education access to the population who have a quite good literacy rate even sparsely living and
weak of infrastructure.
Currently, many projects and programs have been implemented on ODL for example: the project
“Gobi Women” on non formal and distance education was jointly implemented by the
Government of Mongolia and UNESCO, funded mostly by DANIDA (Danish International
Development Assistance) in 1992-1996. A project “Learning for Life” on distance learning which
was a continuation of “Gobi Women” project, was implemented from 1997 to 2001, and more
than 37.0 thousand people were involved
In the beginning, teaching/learning materials were a combination of print, radio as well as local
learning groups and visiting tutors, and family based education for the rural nomadic population,
which relevant to the learners’ needs, knowledge and skills. Then added to use TV or video
lessons on the distance education and currently, more ICT -oriented CDs and VCD materials we
are using.
1 ODL materials are being distributed through NFE Centers and they are available to use free of
charge and copy.
Innovation of Open and Distance Education
In recent years, ODL is being widely utilized in field of formal education, vocational and inservice trainings, although the largest and most substantial use of distance education so far has
been for non-formal education.
Internet based or online distance learning is one of the main forms of distance education
innovations in Mongolia. Several universities and institutions are started to use the Internet based
distance learning and there are several national companies that develops the distance education
software programs. However, delivering the Internet based distance learning is more easily
accessible in the urban areas than in the rural areas where the computer supplement, power
resource, and network connection to Internet is not often available. To solve this problem, twoways-distance learning network was established in 2004 which is being used in-service teacher
training in rural areas and 15 aimag centers connected to this network recently. (An aimag is an
administrative unit like a province).
Challenges and ways to overcome
¨ The communications infrastructure is weak and resources scarce with low levels of disposable
income. Countryside households have electricity though this prone to cuts. Telephone access
is low outside of Ulaanbaatar, however cellular telephone network has reached every aimag
centres. Radio has national coverage by the state-owned Mongol Radio from Ulaanbaatar and
there are local radio stations, increasing in number in recent years. Television is available in
the urban and most of rural areas. Therefore, radio and television are still the most relevant
media for nationwide education.
¨ Computers are few in the provinces though now common in the capital city; but personal
ownership is low. Internet access became available in Mongolia in 1996 but the cost of use is
still high. However, usage of computers has been increasing relatively rapidly since 1990s. For
example, as of 1995 there were no households that owned computers, yet now most
households of middle and higher classes own computers in the city and some of them are
provided with the internet access.
¨ For secondary school’s ICT class, about 25 students share one computer to practice on.
Internet access and usage in secondary schools is low while the Universities and colleges have
better. Open Access is available from libraries in Ulaanbaatar city and Internet cafes. Most
offices in capital city have dial-up or 24 hour Internet connection of low speed. Fortunately,
Internet cafe’s fee has been reducing, now at about 10 cents per an hour. However, as
mentioned above, GDP per capita is 605 USD, or less than $2 per day.
¨ Open Access is more available for people who know foreign language. For instance, there is a
library with access to 3000 journals from USA but the language barrier is big problem for the
users. (English has been becoming popular since the beginning of 1990’s, it is the second
foreign language as well as Russian). Middle age people with higher education use Russian
websites but Russian is not popular among the young generation.
2 ¨ Recent years have seen the growth of independent publishers and competitive pricing in print
production, in contrast to the single state-owned publishing house of pre-transition times.
Electronic publishing is at the beginning stage for public literature.
¨ The cost of distance learning is obviously much higher than what we imagine. We know from
our experience developing of various learning materials costs the most, especially developing
of learning materials for those people who has low education level. If curriculum developers
can use the materials in English, Open Access materials would be helpful in the field of
education.
¨ Long-term system of academic centered learning had formed ready-use type of attitude
among the people, yet no skills of self-studying by using learning materials which replacing
teachers and, no skills in maintaining personal relationship to others were developed and not
prepared to think creatively and for decision making restrict an intensive development of
distance learning.
Conclusions
The following achievements resulted from the fact that open and distance education is
established and is being used widely in both formal and non-formal education field:
Approaches to environment of lifelong education for adults. Distance education is capable
of reaching large numbers of remote learners and of providing a structure to support isolated
learners wherever they are, thus increasing access and equity in educational provision. It can
provide good quality learning materials on a large scale and it can be a cost-effective way of
providing education and training, if appropriately designed. If good example and design in other
countries or regions are published on the Open Access journals we would make adaptation in our
case.
Using Radio and TV for Distance Learning has changed the people’s understanding of
radio’s and TV’s as just the information tools.
Education Usage Has Increased when students started to obtain the knowledge with
appropriate form to their needs from learning materials, thus students are not just learning, they
are rather learning to use them for their lives. Internet access will help students and learners to
develop skills on “learning to learn” or self-learning skills.
Participation of Stakeholders and a Civil Society has Increased. Results in opportunity to
implement a training, which conducted for a certain group of people such as a professional
training, a field of agriculture etc and let people realize that distance education is not job for only
education centers and schools.
Forming a National Structure and Network for Distance Learning. Especially, NFE
“Enlightenment” centers to provide the population with continuous education service, in every
soum (small settlement centre) of the country are a clear example of that. Currently, these centers
not yet connected to the Internet and teachers or facilitators of these centers are unable to use
the Internet as well. If we change this situation it will definitely break down the infrastructure
barriers in Mongolia, and Open Access may gain in relevance.
3 References
Department for National Statistics. (2000). Census for housing and population.
MECS. (2002). Statistical book of MECS. Ulaanbaatar.
MECS & UNESCO. (2003). Education for All issues in Mongolia. Ulaanbaatar.
MECS & ADB. (2003). Education sector development program. Ulaanbaatar.
National Centre for Non Formal and Distance Education. (2005). Research on the distance learning
to the formal and non formal education. Ulaanbaatar .
Oyunchimeg, D & Robinson, B. (1999). Open and distance learning for literacy in Mongolia.
Rassekh, S. (1991). Perspective on literacy: A selected world bibliography. Paris: UNESCO.
Robinson, B. & Solongo, A. (2000). The gender dimension of economic transition in Mongolia.
Ulaanbaatar.
Robinson, K. & Otgonbayar, G. (2003). Final evaluation report of “Learning for Life” project.
Ulaanbaatar
United Nations Development Program. (2003). Human development report: Mongolia 2003.
Urban-Rural Disparities in Mongolia. (2004). Ulaanbaatar.
Batchuluun Yembuu is Director of the National Centre for Non Formal and Distance
Education, Mongolia
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